


In The Image Of A Figure Eight

by lostemotion (geckoholic)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Flowers, Grief/Mourning, Hopeful Ending, Language of Flowers, M/M, Pre-Canon, Sheith Spring Flower Exchange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-15
Updated: 2017-06-15
Packaged: 2018-11-14 13:55:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11209455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/geckoholic/pseuds/lostemotion
Summary: Flowering almond. It means hope. Keith has never quite believed in fate, found the idea stupid actually, and yet the sight fans the fire that burns in his veins, feeds the belief that he'srightand everyone else iswrongand he'll just need to invest the conviction and tenacity to prove it.





	In The Image Of A Figure Eight

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Anon #2 in the sheithbouquet exchange. My pick out of their flower prompts were Snowdrop | Flowering Almond | Hawthorn (Hope), Corchorus (Impatience of Absence), and Milkvetch (Your Presence Softens My Pain), and I got unsure somewhere along the way about how literally I was supposed to take this, so I took two of them, uh, pretty damn literal. XD
> 
> Beta-read by rollingjules. Thank you!! ♥ All remaining mistakes are mine.
> 
> Title is from "In The Embers" by Sleeping At Last.

The funeral, Keith had thought since they were all called into the mess hall and given the news about the disappearance of the Kerberos mission, would be when it'd start to feel real. Isn't that how it's supposed to go—friends and family coming together, crying and saying their goodbyes, that would be rock bottom and from there on in it'd be easier to face the loss and move on. But it still hadn't felt real, not at all. Staring down at an empty coffin didn't change the knot in the pit of his stomach that said it's all not true, that Shiro's alive, that they'll see each other again if he just keeps believing, hoping, searching. 

Keith walks from the cemetery alone, both hands buried in the pockets of his dress uniform, and the anger he feels at _pilot error_ still refuses to morph into grief. He wants to yell at every officer and instructor he passes, tell them they should know better, they should know Shiro better, why'd they put their faith in him in the first place when they were so ready to disown him? The investigation was closed the day before, with the expected result, and to Keith it still smells fishy. Then again, he knows he's always been a bit obsessive – the title of best pilot for his age range isn't so much the result of hard work as it is the result of bitter, grim determination – and he's aware that this idea might destroy him if he lets it. Make everything he worked for, everything Shiro helped him achieve, crumble in his hands. 

He knows he might be wrong. He just really doesn't care. 

The cemetery is in the suburbs of the city closest to the Garrison, and Keith walks towards the city center, past beautiful little houses with well-kept lawns and carefully planned garden arrangement. He doesn't want to go back yet, doesn't want to face the start of the academy going back to normal now that the _idea_ of Shiro and the Holts has been put into those empty graves and shoveled over with dirt and sand. He lets his gaze wander towards the nearest garden, trying to identify the different flowers to offer his mind a tiny, momentary distraction, and his breath catches when he sees the small bush full of fluffy pink blossoms. 

Flowering almond. It means hope. He knows that because, in the orphanage, his choice in books were limited and there's only so many times one can read the same five classic novels before they lose their shine. When he was twelve, he got his hands on a gardening lexicon, and he entertained himself by looking up and memorizing the meaning of each and every flower he encountered on his walk to and from school. 

Keith has never quite believed in fate, found the idea stupid actually, and yet the sight fans the fire that burns in his veins, feeds the belief that he's _right_ and everyone else is _wrong_ and he'll just need to invest the conviction and tenacity to prove it. 

The only things his father left him when he died were a bank account with fifteen dollars in it and a derelict shed in the dessert. Keith stares at the almond bush and he makes a decision; he's going to go back to the Garrison, right now, but he's not giving up. He'll gather his things and leave. He'll hold on to that hope. He'll find out what happened on the mission, and what happened to Shiro. 

 

*** 

 

Tenacity and conviction are strange bedfellows, heralded so often as positive characteristics when viewed from the outside but offering little else than pain and frustration to those actually exhibiting them. There are nights, out here in the desert, when Keith wishes his spirit would just be a little more malleable, a little less prone to going the distance no matter the cost. That he would be able to loosen his death grip on the task in front of him at least now and then, and consider the possibility that his old life might not yet be out of reach.

The date that his calculations marked as special, as a turning point, as _the arrival_ , is preceded by one of those nights. He shifts on the mattress, old and worn through, resting on a creaky bed frame. He hates this place, more than he’d ever hated any other space with four walls and a roof, more than his room in the orphanage or his quarters in the Garrison. That had surprised him, at first; he had always wanted to get out of those small, restrictive rooms that were supposed to be a temporary home but felt like little else than a prison cell. Shouldn’t that mean he’d be happier, out here, in a place all his own and surrounded by open space? Maybe the shed never had a chance. It’s tied too closely to the idea that he’s got a job to do, a very personal quest. There’s a purpose to each day spent in this ramshackle collection of wooden slats held together by goodwill, and every inch of it reminds him, every hour of every day, that he hasn’t yet succeeded.

Keith reaches out, strokes his palm across the sheet, touching the empty space next to his own body. This is his purpose now—filling that empty space with the person who vacated it. The person who left for the moon and was supposed to bring home a bag full of stardust. They’d sat on the roof of their dorm in the Garrison and fantasized about it: how much brighter the stars would be out there, how cold it might be in space, and how Shiro would take care to remember every single tiny thing about how it felt to walk through zero-gravity a million miles from home. They were really going to be up there together, they said. Some part of Keith would be with him, they said. Never really alone, neither of them.

Keith’s hand curls into a fist. _Shiro’s alive._

He throws off the comforter and switches the light on, a bare light bulb that hardly manages to illuminate a diameter of a few feet around its own perch a hands width bellow the ceiling. The rest it dips into murky shadows, and Keith has to squint in order to make out the contents of his research wall.

That’s when he hears the dull, distant thud, a noise he can’t place but also can’t ignore; there’s next to nothing out here in the desert that might make such a sound and have it carry any kind of distance. His mind is racing, stumbling over itself, and he’s tumbling all the way out of bed and feels around for his clothes. The light bulb flickers and dies, and he curses. Moments later he gasps when the shack gets illuminated by a purple-white ray of light from outside, there and gone in the blink of an eye and replaced by darkness. He rushes towards the window and sees, on the horizon, the telltale red and orange staccato of flames.

For the year he spent out there, Keith remained enough of a realist to know that, in the end, Shiro was still lost _in space_ and that there was nothing, short of stealing a shuttle, that would allow Keith to haul him back to earth all on his own. The idea was to find evidence for their survival, people who believe him, and get them to send a rescue mission. Investigating the strange pull to those caves, that had been… Maybe there was a message there. Maybe he’d get Shiro back if he’d decipher it. Maybe they’d show him a path.

But this isn’t a message. This is a crash site.

Heart beating too fast, Keith jumps onto his hoverbike. He bites his lips, trying not to think about what might be waiting for him out there. The ride to the crash site takes the better part of an hour, and by the time he gets there the Garrison’s science division has already cordoned off the site, erected tents, the whole shebang patrolled by armed guards. But the voice deep inside his mind that whispers at him there’s no other way, this is where he needs to be, refuses to be ignored. The Garrison’s own combat training is what enables him to knock out their guards and claim his way inside.

As he looks down at the body strapped to a gurney in the middle of the tent, Keith’s world at once contracts and expands, freezing him in time for a few seconds before his mind comprehends the sight.

 

***

 

Stubborn and persistent hope aside, Keith didn't expect, even in his wildest dreams, that what he'd find would be Shiro himself. He had even less of an idea about the stream of events his discovery would kick loose. Never could he have imagined that the next time he was doing a walk through a bed of flowers it’d be on an alien planet, or that he’d go to bed every night on a flying castle ship. But he's found the _where_ doesn't matter nearly as much as the _with whom_. 

The space beside him is no longer empty. When he tosses and turns at night, convinced it has all been a weird dream and once he opens his eyes, he'll be back in that shack, he wakes to the sound Shiro's breathing. The low, steady rhythm makes it a little easier to peer into the dark and assure himself that this, however unlikely and strange, is his new reality, and that the loss and grim determination are a thing of the past. For once, Shiro isn't already awake, restless and haunted, but sleeping peacefully and within reach. Keith allows himself to brush his fingers against Shiro's skin, past his shoulder and down his human arm, smiling as Shiro shudders and burrows his face deeper into the soft pillows. 

Keith glances over to the dresser across from the bed, not hard to make out in the gentle glow of the light generated the crystal that streams through the whole ship and never really fades. His gaze wanders further, to a framed picture hanging on the wall above the dresser. Keith himself brought it along from their last mission, traded for it on the alien equivalent of a flea market. It's from earth, a cheap art print, the motif not one he's been familiar with before. Not exactly his usual style either—wildflowers at the edge of a field, swaying in the breeze beneath a clear blue sky. But he didn't buy it for its artistic merit, or out of nostalgia. 

One of the flowers depicted is milkvetch, and according to his book from the orphanage that, too, has a distinct meaning. _Your presence softens my pain_ , which he remembers because he found it rather abstract. At the time he hadn't yet understood, didn't know what it was like when your whole world brightens or darkens with the presence or absence of one specific person. 

He does now. 

After he acquired it, he'd kept it in a drawer for almost a week, before he reminded himself that life's too short to keep these things to himself and that he'd already lost Shiro once and sworn there would be no regrets between them anymore. He'd pulled the picture from said drawer and held it out, unceremoniously. Shiro had thanked him, even though he was visibly puzzled, and Keith had rolled his eyes and explained the meaning. Afterward, Shiro had been quiet for a long time, and then he'd nodded, kissed him, and told him that being with Keith did the same for him. 

Shiro's breath stutters with the beginning of a nightmare, and Keith figures it's time to put that to a test. His fingers on Shiro's skin go still, and he settles back down, cuddling closer to Shiro's warmth. He murmurs soothing words into the crook of his neck, confident that they'll reach him even through the maze of sleep and dark memories, and he doesn't stop talking until Shiro quiets and shifts closer as well.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [tumblr](http://lostemotion.tumblr.com) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/spacenerdz).

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Let Hope Never Die (Figure Eight Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12031632) by [Lunarium](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lunarium/pseuds/Lunarium)




End file.
